Signification: It favours marriage and increases the force of personality in men, but in women it exercises a bad influence on marriage and makes them sullen, discouraged and unhappy. Unfavourable for journeys.

Signification: Favourable for studies, earnings and professional success as well as for love.

Make talismans for love spells an to cure illness; work spells intended to dispose of enemies.

11. Mansion: al-Zubra, The Lion’s Mane, 8* Leo 34’ to 21* Leo 25’.

Signification: Favourable for trade, wealth, marriage and travel. Unfavourable for health in women. Make talismans to increase trade and cast spells to enable prisoners to escape and to lay siege to fortresses.

12. Mansion: al-Sarfa, The Lion’s Tail, 21* Leo 25’ to 4* Virgo 17’.

Signification: Favourable to send messages, and to agriculture in general. It brings elevation in the life of people who serve another one.

Make talismans favourable to crops and to promote optimistic circumstances.

13. Mansion: al-Auwa, The Barker, 4* Virgo 17’ to 17* Virgo 8’.

Signification: It is a sign of benevolence and kindness and exerts a good influence on travel.

Make talismans for good trade and good crops and to gain the good will of the mighty. Spells increase the quality of relationships and dissolve sexual problems.

14. Mansion: al-Simak, The Spike of Virgo, 17* Virgo 8’ to 0* Libra.

Signification: Favourable to attract friendship and romance; to strengthen conjugal love and to restore health completely through medical treatment. Unfavourable in the first year of marriage and for journeys by land.

MAke talismans for separation and divorce.

15. Mansion: al-Gafr, The Covering, 0* Libra to 12* Libra 51’.

Signification: Attract and generate friendship, harmony and good relations. Unfavourable for journeys.

Make talismans to increase the success of finding material or intellectual treasures and work spells to protect friends and injure enemies.

Very interesting reading, you are obviously a genuine scholar.
Each of the above mentions fashioning a talisman, but gives no direction as to what it might entail. Does the element need to be well aspected in ones birth chart?

Sorry poor choice of word, my apologies.
What I was meaning was, take for instance the first one; Mansion: al-Saratan, The Horns of Aries, 0* Aries to 12* Aries 51’.
Would Aries need to be well positioned in your birth chart for this to compliment (strike a chord) with the maker of the talisman?

I’ve read on renaissanceastrology.com/astrologicaltalismanchoose.html that certain talismans can have a detremental affect because
“the planet is afflicted by being in fall, detriment, combust or retrograde in your natal chart”, causing an allergic reaction to them”.

Nigel,
as these Talismans are Lunar ones, the most important points to observe are the essential and accidental dignities and debilities of the Moon at the time of the Talisman’s creation. What one would love to see is a rising, waxing Moon, not combust or under the Sun’s beams. Furthermore she should not make an applying conjunction, opposition or square with the Greater or Lesser Malefics, Saturn and Mars. All the other rules of electional astrology apply as well.

If Luna is debilitated in your chart, you might want to take care if you want to work with Lunar Talismans and should consider a gemstone reading beforehand. This would provide you with information about particular gemstones & crystals which may be used to balance the energy of debilitated Planets in the nativity. For more information about this, please go to “Astrological Services” on the top of the page.

I’m a novice at astrological magic (and astrology, for that matter), but not so much at astronomy … and I cannot help but wonder why the Mansions are based on a 28-day lunar cycle. The actual mean length of a lunation is about 29.5 days. It would seem like the eminently practical ancients knew this, yet decided to go with the incommensurable 28. Do you have any ideas about this?

I don’t think that anybody knows why the ancients decided to use 28 Mansions. Fact is that there are a variety of different methods of locating the boundaries of these Mansions. The boundaries of the ones used in the tropical zodiac are regular, each is about 12 degrees and 51 minutes but on the other hand the constellational Mansions are based on the location of fixed stars and highly irregular in width. Maybe this has to do with the number chosen. If you should ever find anybody who can explain why there are 28 Mansions, please let me know as I would be interested to know, too.

It is based on the combination of the seven traditional planets, and the four traditional elements.

7 x 4 = 28.

This also assists in the math behind a lunar calendar… let’s all be honest, here, the Moon is the most complex celestial body in the sky. There are numerous cycles to account for besides the obvious cycle of phases… then there is the position of the head and tail of the dragon, which lead to the cycle of eclipses, etc etc etc. Just to determine the position of the Moon within 1 degree requires knowing the position of Jupiter.

Trying to base a calendar off of 29.5 days, while obviously more accurate, makes actually following such a calendar extremely impractical. However, a 13 month cycle of 28 days makes a very handy 364 day yearly calendar.. only 1.25 days off of actual, and far closer than the 12 * 30 = 360 of the solar calendar. This is also the basis of the traditional “Year and a Day”.

I think I know. While the lunar month (new moon to new moon) averages 29.5 days, the sidereal month (lunar orbit) is 27.3 days. Probably just rounding that up to 28. And the fact that it doesn’t come out even just gives more different combinations of moon phase and mansion.

Peter,
You have another list on another page, it starts with 19.26 Aries to 2.17 Taurus, is THAT list a constellational one? It numbers 28 also, but obviously doesn’t correspond to this list. Are these just different sources (Picatrix vs. Barrett for instance?). -Alan

No, Alan, I don’t think that they are constellational. If you have a close look you will find that all the Mansions are roughly of equal size, between 12* and 13*. (Mansion #1, 13*01, Mansion #2 12*52′, etc) If they would be constellational there would be huge differences in size. Unfortunately we don’t know the source the Planeten Buch of Straubing used. (Straubing is the place in Germany where it was printed/published, by the way, so we don’t know the identity of the author/compiler either) If you look how Picatrix/Agrippa organise the Mansions, you will find out that they are structured to fit in with the moveable signs and therefore with the seasons (Mansion #1 from 0* Aries, Mansion #8 from 0* Cancer, Mansion #15 from 0* Libra and Masion #22 from 0* Capricorn). I have translated and published the table from the Planeten Buch particularly because it uses another logic, although I have not found out what the reason for it is.

Tony Willis has made a synoptic view of many accounts of the mansions. I found it at toj.posterous.com. The posts start on December 18th (2010?), currently to be found on page 3 of the blog and not likely to move any time soon as the blog seems abandoned.
Melissa

How ancient are these color attributions? They read like the Golden Dawn colors for the signs of the zodiac – Aries, Red through to Libra, Emerald Green and back again via Sagittarius’s Cerulean – transposed onto the Lunar Mansions.
Melissa

The best single source for colors ,Angels, etc. Is Nigel Jackson’s Celestial Magic. It’s a small book, so not encyclopedic, but deep. I don’t. Recall the colors well enough to say if this is his list or not; but Jackson got his knowledge through one of the surviving ruhani orders, not the GD.

Indeed, I have just looked it up and the colour correspondences I gave are identical to the ones found in N. Jackson’s Celestial Magic.I have not been able to find another written source attributing colours to the individual mansions so far.

I could only trace the colour scheme I provided back to N. Jackson’s book Celestial Magic, and have added the credits to the table above. I do not know much about Mr Jackson and have no idea what his sources are. Perhaps Freeman Presson knows more about this.

Thank you for the update, Peter.
I find it a very great coincidence that Mr Jackson’s color circle can be so exactly superimposed onto that of the Golden Dawn. Both pass through the spectrum starting at the first point of Aries with Red and proceeding via shades of Orange, Yellow, Green, Cerulean, Indigo, Violet and Purple back to Red.
All the ancient color attributions to Signs I am familiar with are not schematic in that way. Fire Signs are often given the color Red and Earth Signs Green, following another formula altogether. The colors Lilly assigns to the Houses are non-sequential: the First House is white or grey, the Second green, the Third red and yellow, which Lilly describes as the color of the herb sorrel, the Fourth is red, and so on, in similarly haphazard fashion.
Does anyone know of a color-assigning method used by the ancients that follows the colors of the spectrum in the way the Golden Dawn and Mr Jackson’s attributes do? I am fairly widely read and I have not come across such a thing, but I concede I have not read everything available. if I have missed something, I would be pleased to have the gap in my knowledge repaired.
Melissa